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<table width="100%" summary="page for UStaxWords"><tr><td>UStaxWords</td><td style="text-align: right;">R Documentation</td></tr></table>

<h2> Number of Words in US Tax Law</h2>

<h3>Description</h3>

<p>Thousands of words in US tax law for 1995 to 2015 in 
10 year intervals.  This includes income taxes and 
all taxes in the code itself (written by congress) 
and regulations (written by government 
administrators).  For 2015 only 
&quot;EntireTaxCodeAndRegs&quot; is given;  for other years, 
this number is broken down by income tax vs. other 
taxes and code vs. regulations.  
</p>


<h3>Usage</h3>

<pre>data(UStaxWords)</pre>


<h3>Format</h3>

<p>A <code>data.frame</code> containing:
</p>

<dl>
<dt>year</dt><dd><p> tax year </p>
</dd>
<dt>IncomeTaxCode</dt><dd>
<p>number of words in thousands in the US income tax code
</p>
</dd>
<dt>otherTaxCode</dt><dd>
<p>number of words in thousands in US tax code other than income tax
</p>
</dd>
<dt>EntireTaxCode</dt><dd>
<p>number of words in thousands in the US tax code
</p>
</dd>
<dt>IncomeTaxRegulations</dt><dd>
<p>number of words in thousands in US income tax regulations
</p>
</dd>
<dt>otherTaxRegulations</dt><dd>
<p>number of words in thousands in US tax regulations other than
income tax
</p>
</dd>
<dt>IncomeTaxCodeAndRegs</dt><dd>
<p>number of words in thousands in both the code and regulations for
the US income tax
</p>
</dd>
<dt>otherTaxCodeAndRegs</dt><dd>
<p>number of wrds in thousands in both code and regulations for US
taxes apart from income taxes.
</p>
</dd>
<dt>EntireTaxCodeAndRegs</dt><dd>
<p>number of words in thousands in US tax code and regulations
</p>
</dd>
</dl>



<h3>Details</h3>

<p>Thousands of words in the US tax code and federal 
tax regulations, 1955-2015.  This is based on data 
from the Tax Foundation (taxfoundation.org), adjusted 
to eliminate an obvious questionable observation in
<code>otherTaxRegulations</code> for 1965.  The numbers of 
words in <code>otherTaxRegulations</code> was not reported
directly by the Tax Foundation but is easily computed 
as the difference between their Income and Entire tax 
numbers.  This series  shows the numbers falling by 48
percent between 1965 and 1975 and by 1.5 percent 
between 1995 and 2005.  These are the only declines 
seen in these numbers and seem inconsistent with the
common concern (expressed e.g., in Moody, Warcholik 
and Hodge, 2005) about the difficulties of simplifying
any governmental program, because vested interest 
appear to defend almost anything.  Lessig (2011) 
notes that virtually all provisions of US law that 
favor certain segments of society are set to expire 
after a modest number of years.  These sunset 
provisions provide recurring opportunities for 
incumbent politicians to extort campaign contributions 
from those same segments to ensure the continuation of 
the favorable treatment.  
</p>
<p>The decline of 48 percent in 
<code>otherTaxRegulations</code> seems more curious for two
additional reasons:  First, it was preceded by a
tripling of <code>otherTaxRegulations</code> between 1955 
and 1965.  Second, it was NOT accompanied by any
comparable behavior of <code>otherTaxCode</code>. Instead, 
the latter grew each decade by between 17 and 53 
percent, similar to but slower than the growth in
<code>IncomeTaxCode</code> and <code>IncomeTaxRegulations</code>.
</p>
<p>Accordingly, <code>otherTaxRegulations</code> for 1965 is 
replaced by the average of the numbers for 1955 and 
1975, and <code>EntireTaxRegulations</code> for 1965 is
comparably adjusted.  This replaces (1322, 2960) for
those two variables for 1965 with (565, 2203).  In
addition, <code>otherTaxCodeAndRegs</code> and
<code>EntireTaxCodeAndRegulations</code> are also changed 
from (1626, 3507) to (870, 2751).
</p>
<p>Independent of whether this adjustment is correct or 
not, it's clear that there have been roughly 3 words 
of regulations for each word in the tax code.  Most 
of these are income tax regulations, which have 
recently contained 4.5 words for every word in code. 
The income tax code currently includes roughly 50
percent more words than other tax code.
</p>


<h3>Author(s)</h3>

<p>Spencer Graves</p>


<h3>Source</h3>

<p><a href="http://taxfoundation.org/article/number-words-internal-revenue-code-and-federal-tax-regulations-1955-2005">Tax
Foundation:  Number of Words in Internal Revenue Code and Federal
Tax Regulations, 1955-2005</a>
Scott Greenberg, <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/blog/federal-tax-laws-and-regulations-are-now-over-10-million-words-long">&quot;Federal Tax Laws and Regulations are
Now Over 10 Million Words Long&quot;, October 08, 2015</a>
</p>


<h3>References</h3>

<p>J. Scott Moody, Wendy P. Warcholik, and Scott A. Hodge (2005) &quot;The
Rising Cost of Complying with the Federal Income Tax&quot;, The Tax
Foundation Special Report No. 138.
</p>


<h3>Examples</h3>

<pre>
data(UStaxWords)
plot(EntireTaxCodeAndRegs/1000 ~ year, UStaxWords, 
  type='b',
  ylab='Millions of words in US tax code &amp; regs')

# Write to a file for Wikimedia Commons
## Not run: 
svg('UStaxWords.svg')

## End(Not run)
matplot(UStaxWords$year, UStaxWords[c(2:3, 5:6)]/1000,
    type='b', bty='n', ylab='',
    ylim=c(0, max(UStaxWords$EntireTaxCodeAndRegs)/1000),
    las=1, xlab="", cex.axis=2)
lines(EntireTaxCodeAndRegs/1000~year, UStaxWords, lwd=2)
## Not run: 
dev.off()

## End(Not run)
# lines 1:4 = IncomeTaxCode, otherTaxCode, 
#   IncomeTaxRegulations,
#   and otherTaxRegulations, respectively

##
## Plotting the original numbers without the adjustment
##
UStax. &lt;- UStaxWords
UStax.[2,c(6:7, 9:10)] &lt;- c(1322, 2960, 1626, 3507)
matplot(UStax.$year, UStax.[c(2:3, 5:6)]/1000,
      type='b', bty='n', ylab='',
      ylim=c(0, max(UStax.$EntireTaxCodeAndRegs)/1000),
      las=1, xlab="", cex.axis=2)
lines(EntireTaxCodeAndRegs/1000~year, UStax., lwd=2)
# Note especially the anomalous behaviour of line 4 =
# otherTaxRegulations.  As noted with "details" above,
# otherTaxRegulations could have tripled between 1955 
# and 1965, then fallen by 48 percent between 1965 and
# 1975.  However, that does not seem credible, 
# especially since there was no corresponding behavior 
# in otherTaxCode.

##
## linear trend 
##
(newWdsPerYr &lt;- lm(EntireTaxCodeAndRegs~year, 
    UStaxWords))
plot(UStaxWords$year, resid(newWdsPerYr))
# Roughly 150,000 additional words added each year
# since 1955.  
# No indication of nonlinearity.  

</pre>


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